My sister Henrietta

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT OF

Kate Gordon Moore

ERNEST RENAN
i From a painting by Henri Schaffer, r86o).

MY

Sister Henrietta

BY

Ernest Renan

?rn:i5ln!fi from ff\» French

by Leonora Teller

CHICAGO
E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY

521-631 WABASH AVE.

Copyright by

E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY

1895

CT

1013

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

This little book is the textual re-
print of a small work of which Ernest
Renan had one hundred copies printed
and issued in September. 1862, under
the following title, " Henrietta Renan,
a souvenir for those who have known
her."

We find also the words, These
pages are not for the public eye, and

shall not be for sale."

In 1883, in his " Recollections of
Childhood and Youth," Ernest Renan
expresses himself thus in the preface:
" The person who has had the great-
est influence over my life, my sister
Henrietta, has no place in this work.
In September, 1862, the year after
the death of this precious friend, I

871214

PREFACE.

wrote for the few who had known her
the little work consecrated to her
memory. There have been but a
hundred copies issued. My sister
was so modest, she had so much aver-
sion to the noisy world that I should
have expected her to arise from her
tomb to reproach me if I had given
these pages to the public. At times
I thought of appending them to this
volume, then again it seemed to me
that it would be a kind of profanation.
The souvenir of my sister has been
read sympathetically by those who
felt kindly toward her and toward
me. I ought not to expose the mem-
ory which is holy to me to the super-
cilious comments of those who think
when they buy a book that they have
the right to criticise it. I thought

PREFACE.

that by inserting these pages about
my sister, in a volume to be put upon
the market, I should be as culpable as
if I exposed her portrait in a common
shop. This work, therefore, shall
not be re-issued until after my death.
Perhaps then may be added some
letters of my dear one, which I myself
will select."

Finally, in a codicil to his will,
dated November 4th, 1888, Ernest
Renan authorized the present edition,
saying, "My wife will regulate the
manner in winch my little volume of
souvenirs of my sister Henrietta shall
be given to the public." The present
edition, therefore, is prepared by
Madame Cornelia Renan. A selec-
tion of Henrietta Renan's letters was
not made by her brother. These letters

PREFACE.

cannot, owing to their number, find
a place in this publication, and will be
given in a special edition of their
own.

HENRIETTA RENAN
(From a photograph l.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
By Eniest Renan.
MY SISTER HENRIETTA.
The memory of man leaves but a
trace — a mark on the bosom of the
Infinite. Still it is not altogether a
vain thing. The conscience of hu-
manity is the only thing we have by
which to judge of the universal con-
science. The right estimate of man's
character is a part of Absolute Jus-
tice. So, although noble lives need no
other remembrance than God's, still
one wishes to recollect them. I
should be the more guilty if I neg-
lected this last duty to my sister Hen-
rietta, because I alone knew the
worth of that vanished soul. Her
timidity, her reserve, her aversion to

PREFACE.

all publicity, prevented the veil
spread over her rare nature from be-
ing lifted. Her life was but a succes-
sion of acts of devotion destined to
remain hidden. I will not betray her
secrets; these pages are not for the
public and shall not be given to it by
me; but the privileged few to whom
she revealed herself would have a
right to reproach me if I neglected to
set in order those few things that
could complete their memories of
her.

My Sister Henrietta.
i.

My sister Henrietta was born at
Treguier, on the twenty-second of
July, 1811. Her life was early sad-
dened and filled with austere duties.
She never knew any joys other
than those bestowed by virtue and
affection. She inherited from her
father a melancholy disposition which
gave her a distaste for all vulgar dis-
tractions, and even inspired in her a
certain inclination to fly from the
world and its pleasures. She had
nothing of the genial, gay, spirituelle
nature that my mother preserved, even
to her hale old age. Her religious
sentiments, at first narrowed down

into the formula of Catholicism, were

9

IO MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

always very deep. Treguier, the lit-
tle town where we were born, was
an old Episcopal city, rich in poeti-
cal impressions; it was one of those
grand monastic cities founded by the
Breton immigrants in the sixth cen-
tury, after the Gallic and Irish fash-
ion. A certain Abbe" Tual, or Tug-
dual, was its father. When Trom£no£
in the ninth century, wishing to found
a Breton nation, transformed into
bishoprics ail those grand monaster-
ies on the north side, Rabutual or the
monastery of Saint Tual, was of the
number. In the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, Treguier became
quite an ecclesiastical center and the
rendezvous of a small local nobility.
During the Revolution, the bishopric
was suppressed, but after the re-estab-

kJj I— ,-_rdJ-

™ - . v i ■ • 1 9W ,i

irP

««*.<*'

HOUSE IN TREGUIER, WHERE ERNEST RENAN
WAS BORN.

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. II

lishment of the Catholic faith the vast
buildings which the town possessed
made it again a religious center, a
town of convents and religious estab-
lishments. Bourgeois* life was there
very little developed. All the streets,
save one or two, are long, deserted
alleys, lined by high convent walls or
old prebendal houses surrounded by
gardens. A general air of distinction
permeated everything, and gave this
poor, dead city a charm which the
common towns that had sprung up
throughout the country, though richer
and more stirring, did not possess.

The Cathedral itself, a beautiful
building of the fourteenth century,
with its lofty naves, its astonishing
architectural flights, its prodigiously
tall steeple and its old Roman tower,

12 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

the remains of an edifice still older,
seemed made expressly to awaken
the noblest thoughts. In the even-
ing, when it was left open very late
for the prayers of the pious, lighted
with a single lamp, and with the
musty odor peculiar to old churches,
the immense, empty structure was
full of the awe of the Infinite. A
quarter of a league distant was the
chapel, raised nearly on the birth-
place of the good advocate St.
Ives, a Breton saint of old times,
who had become in the popular belief
the defender of the feeble and the
great righter of wrongs. Near there,
on a high point, stood the ruins of
the old church of St. Michael, de-
stroyed by lightning. We were taken
there each Thursday before Easter.

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 1 3

The legend runs that on that day all
the bells, during the great silence im-
posed upon them, go to Rome for the
blessing of the Pope. To see them
pass, one must climb up the hill cov-
ered with ruins. Closing the eyes,
you could see them sweeping through
the air, softly bending, their lace
robes which they wore on the day of
baptism floating behind them. A
little farther away rose the little
chapel of Cinq-Plais, in a charming
valley; on the other side of the river,
near an old sacred fountain, stood our
Notre-Dame-du-Tromeur, a vener-
ated resort of pilgrims.

A strong inclination toward the life
of a recluse was the result, with my
sister, of a childhood passed in these
poetic and melancholy surroundings.

14 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

Some old nuns, turned out of their
convent by the Revolution, had
opened a school, and they taught her
to read and recite Latin psalms. She
learned by heart all those they sang
in church, and she learned later the
old texts, which she translated into
French and Italian, and thus acquired
some knowledge of Latin, although
she never regularly studied it. Nev-
ertheless, her education would have
necessarily remained very incomplete
had it not been happily fated that she
should have a teacher superior to any
that had been in the place up to that
time. Some of the noble families
of Tr^guier had returned completely
ruined after the emigration. A daugh-
ter of one of these families who had
been educated in England began to

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 15

teach. She was a person of distin-
guished taste and manners, and she
made a profound impression on my
sister, that never was effaced.

The misfortunes that early sur-
rounded her increased her natural
tendency to concentration. Our
grandfather on the paternal side be-
longed to a race of sea-faring peas-
ants, who inhabit the county of
Goelo. He had accumulated a small
fortune by means of his boat, and
come to live at Tr^guier. Our father
had been in the service of the Republic.
After the maritime disasters of the
times, he commanded ships on his
own account, and allowed himself to
be drawn little by little into a large
trade. This was a great mistake.
Completely unused to business, sim-

1 6 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

pie-hearted, incapable of all calcula-
tion, incessantly hindered by that
shyness which makes a sailor a real
child in all the practical affairs of life,
he saw the small fortune he had ac-
cumulated drawn slowly into a bot-
tomless gulf. The events of 1815
brought on a series of calamities that
proved fatal to him.

His sentimental, rather weak nature
was not proof against these continued
shocks. He withdrew, little by little,
from the enterprises of life. My sister
endeavored, hour by hour, to alleviate
the distress brought on by anxiety in
this good, generous nature forced in-
to an employment foreign to it. She
acquired an early maturity in these
hard experiences; from the age of
twelve she was a serious little body,

SPIRE OF THE TREC.riER CATHEDRAI..

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 17

worn out with care and weighed down
with grave thoughts and somber pre-
sentiments.

On his return from one of his long
voyages over our cold, sad seas my
father felt his last thrill of joy: I was
born in February, 1823.

The arrival of a little brother was a
great comfort to my sister. She de-
voted herself to me with all the force
of a timid, tender heart that needs
something to love. I remember still,
the petty tyrannies I exercised over
her, and against which she never re-
belled.

When she started out, ready to go
and join her young companions, I
would hang to her gown and beg her
to return. Then she would come
back, take off her holiday attire and

l8 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

remain with me. One day she threat-
ened jokingly if I was not good she
would die. She pretended she was
dead in her chair. The horror that
this feigned insensibility of my dear
one caused me is perhaps the strongest
impression I ever experienced, fate
having decreed that I should not be
conscious when she breathed her last.

Carried away by excitement, I
threw myself upon her and bit her
arm terribly; I can still hear her cry
of anguish. For the reproaches she
made to me I made but one answer,
"Why were you dead? Will you die
again? "

In July, 1828, the misfortunes of
our father led to a frightful castas-
trophe. One day, his ship that sailed
from St. Malo entered the port of

my sister Henrietta. 19

Treguier without him. The crew de-
clared that for several days they had
seen nothing of him. For a whole
month my mother sought for him,
with inexpressible anguish. At last
she learned that a body had been
found on the coast of Erqui, a village
situated between St. Brieuc and Cape
FreTiel. It was decided that the body
was our father's.

What was the cause of his death?
Was he surprised by one of those ac-
cidents so common in the life of sea-
faring men? Had he abandoned him-
self to one of those long dreams of the
Infinite which to the Breton means
endless sleep? Did he think he had
earned repose? Finding the struggle
so hard, did he seat himself on the
rock saying, "This shall be the stone

20 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

of my eternal rest. Here I will repose
because I have chosen it?" We never
knew.

They buried him on the beach
where twice a day the waves came to
visit him. I have not yet been able
to raise a stone to his memory. My
mother's sorrow was deep. She be-
lieved in our father and loved him
tenderly. She could not speak of
him without tears and she was per-
suaded that his tired and tortured
soul was alwa3's pure and true in the
eyes of God.

II.

From this moment our condition
was that of poverty. My brother, who
was nineteen years old, went to Paris,
and there commenced that life of hard
work and constant application which

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 21

was not sufficiently rewarded. We
left Treguier, which was full of un-
happy memories, and went to live at
Lannion, where my mother's family
resided. My sister was seventeen.
Her faith was always earnest, and the
thought of embracing a religious life
had taken strong hold of her mind.
On winter evenings she carried me
to church under her cloak, and I was
delighted to tramp through the snow,
thus completely sheltered. If it had
not been for me she would undoubt-
edly have chosen this life which, seen
in the light of her instruction and
with her pious disposition, her lack of
fortune and the customs of the coun-
try, seemed marked out for her. The
convent of St. Anne, at Lannion,
which combined the care of the sick

22 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

with the education of women, particu-
larly attracted her. Alas! perhaps if
she had carried out this idea it would
have been better for her, i_Mt ohe
was too good a girl, too tender a sis-
ter, to prefer her happiness to her
duty, even though the religious be-
liefs which she still held, urged her to
it. From that time she considered
herself charged with my future. One
day she noticed my embarrassed
movements and saw that I sought
timidly to hide a rent in a well-worn
garment of mine. She wept; the
sight of this poor child, of refined
instincts, destined to misery, broke
her heart. She resolved to accept
the battle of life, and imposed upon
herself the task of bridging the chasm
of distress which our father's misfor-
tunes had opened before us.

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 23

The manual labor of a young girl
was entirely insufficient for that. The
career she embraced proved the bit-
terest of all. It was decided that we
should return to Treguier and that
there she should become a teacher.
Of all the positions that a well-raised
young person without fortune could
choose, the instruction of women in a
little provincial town is, without ex-
ception, that which demands the
greatest courage. These were the
days immediately following the Revo-
lution of 1830, which were, for the
remote provinces, times of trying
changes. The nobility under the
Restoration, seeing their privileges
unquestioned, took a leading part in
the management of affairs. To re-
venge themselves for fancied humili-

24 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

ations in the past, they withdrew into
a narrow circle and gave no aid to the
general development of society. All
the Legitimist families affected to be-
lieve that their children could only be
educated in the religious communi-
ties. The bourgeois families, to be in
the fashion and to imitate the nobility,
followed their example in this regard.
Incapable of descending to any of
those vulgar schemings, without
which, in a private school, it is almost
impossible to succeed, my sister, with
her rare distinction, her deep mind
and solid education, saw her poor
little school abandoned. Her modesty
and reserve, the exquisite care that
she bestowed upon the least detail,
were here the reasons of her failure.
Obliged to cope with the meanest

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 25

motives and the most foolish preten-
sions, this noble and great spirit
spent itself in a fruitless struggle
against a low state of society from
which the Revolution had carried off
the better elements it had once pos-
sessed, and left nothing in their place.
Some superior people among the
mean little souls of the country knew
how to appreciate her. A very intel-
ligent, unprejudiced man, an excep-
tion in this provincial village, where
aristocracy had either disappeared or
become lowered or vulgarized, con-
ceived a sincere affection for her.
My sister, in spite of a birthmark, to
which it took some time to become
accustomed, was at this age extremely
charming. Those who never knew
her till after years, when she was

26 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

worn out by a rigorous climate, could
not imagine how delicate and refined
her features were. Her eyes were of
a rare sweetness; her hand was as
beautiful and delicate as I have ever
seen. A proposal was made, with
certain conditions delicately attached.
These conditions were such as to
separate her in a measure from those
for whom it was thought she had
worked enough. She refused, al-
though the clearness and justice of
her mind inspired in her a sympathy
with those qualities in another. She
preferred poverty to riches, if the lat-
ter were not to be shared with her
family.

Her situation, nevertheless, be-
came more and more painful. The
tuitions which were due were so irreg-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 27

ularly paid that sometimes we seri-
ously regretted having left Lannion,
where we had always found devotion
and sympathy.

She then resolved to drain the cup
to its bitter dregs (1835). A friend of
our family, who had about this time
gone on a visit to Paris, told her of a
situation as under-teacher in a small
school for girls. The poor child ac-
cepted it. She started at the age of
twenty-four, without protection or
advice, for a world of which she was
ignorant and which reserved for her a
cruel apprenticeship.

Her first days in Paris were horri-
ble. That cold, cruel world, full of
charlatanism, that desert where she
had not a single real friend, filled her
with despair. The deep affection that

28 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

we Bretons have for home, native
soil and family life, awoke keenly in
her, adrift on an ocean where her tim-
idity kept her from being appreciated.
Her reserve hindered her from form-
ing new connections that would in
some measure have consoled her; she
fell a prey to a home-sickness that
seriously affected her health. The
most cruel thing for a Breton in the
first moments of his transplanting is
that he feels deserted by God as well
as man. Heaven is veiled from him.
His faith in general morality, his
tranquil optimism are shattered. He
feels that he is cast down from Para-
dise into a hell of icy indifference.
The voice of the good man sounds
far off and hollow to him, and he cries
bitterly, " How can we sing the

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 29

Lord's song in a strange land?" To
add to her distress, the first houses
into which her fate led her were not
worthy of her. Imagine a tender
young girl who had never before left
her home, her mother, her friends,
thrown suddenly into one of those
frivolous boarding-schools where her
tenderest feelings were wounded every
moment, and the teachers showed
nothing but carelessness, frivolity
and sordidness. This first experi-
ence prejudiced her very deeply
against the boarding-schools in Paris.
Twenty times she was on the point of
leaving; it needed invincible courage
to remain.

Nevertheless, little by little, she
was appreciated. The supervision
of the studies in one of these schools,

30 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

fortunately, this time a very reputable
one, was confided to her; but the ob-
stacles which hindered her from
carrying out her views, the little
meannesses inseparable from these
private establishments, almost al-
ways kept up by the proprietors with
a view to gain, prevented her from
ever taking pleasure in this employ-
ment.

She worKed sixteen hours a day.
She submitted to all the public tests
imposed by the rules. The work had
not the effect upon her it would have
had upon a mediocre nature. Instead
of crushing her it strengthened her
and greatly developed her ideas. Her
education, already quite extensive,
became more liberal. She studied
the works of the modern historical

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 3 1

school, and later it needed but a few
suggestions from me to make her one
of the finest of critics. At the same
time, her religious ideas were modi-
fied. History showed her the insuf-
ficiency of all religious dogma; but
her genuinely pious nature, the result
of birth and early education, was
too solid to be shattered. This
development of the intellect, which
might have been dangerous in an-
other woman, was harmless here; but
she kept these ideas to herself. Cul-
ture had in her eyes an intrinsic and
absolute value; she never thought of
parading it vainly.

In 1838 she sent for me to come to
Paris. Educated at Treguier by the
excellent priests who conducted the
little seminary there, I announced at

32 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

an early period my intention to adopt
an ecclesiastical life. My success at
college delighted my sister, and she
had imparted it to a good and dis-
tinguished man, -who was also a zeal-
ous Catholic, Dr. Descuret, a physi-
cian in her school, the author of the
Medecitis des passions.

M. Descuret spoke to M. Dupau-
loup, who was then conducting in the
most brilliant fashion the little sem-
inary Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet,
of the possible acquisition of such a
good scholar, and returned to tell my
sister that a scholarship was offered
to me at the little seminary. I was
then fifteen and a half. My sister,
whose faith in Catholicism had already
begun to be shaken, saw, with some
regret, the wholly clerical direction

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 33

my education had taken, but she
knew the respect that the faith of a
child deserves. She never said one
word to turn me from the path I had
voluntarily chosen. She came to see
me every week; she still wore the
simple green woolen shawl that had in
Brittany covered her proud form.
She was the same loving, sweet young
girl, but with an added firmness and
power which the trials of her life and
her deep studies had produced.

The career of a teacher is so un-
profitable for women that at the end
of five years passed in Paris, after
several illnesses the result of over-
work, my sister was still far from
carrying out the plans which she had
made; but it is true that these plans
were so extensive as to have discour-

34 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

aged any other heart than hers. Our
father had left debts which exceeded
much the value of our paternal home,
the only property remaining to us.
But our mother was so beloved, and
all business matters are treated in
such a patriarchal manner in that
country, that not a single creditor
thought of forcing a settlement. It
was agreed that my mother should
keep the house, paying what she
could, and when she could. My
sister did not wish to hear of rest till
all this heavy indebtedness should be
liquidated. For this reason she was
led to listen to propositions made to
her in 1840, to go as a private teacher
into Poland. It would be necessary
to expatriate herself for years and ac-
cept the most binding contracts; but

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 35

she had made the greatest effort of
her life when she left Brittany to enter
into the great world. She started in
January, 1841, traveled through the
Black Forest and the south of Ger-
many, then covered with snow, joined
at Vienna the family to which she had
attached herself; then, climbing the
Carpathians, arrived at the Chateau
of Clemensow, upon the banks of the
Bug, a gloomy dwelling, where dur-
ing ten years she was to learn how
bitter is exile even when sustained by
the highest motives.

This time, at least, Fate afforded
her one compensation for many in-
justices, in placing her in a family that
1 can properly enough mention, since
to its historical fame was added a con-
temporarv glory which put the name

36 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

in every mouth. This was the family
of Count Andre Zamoyski. The ardor
with which she entered upon her
duties, the affection she conceived for
her three pupils, the happiness of
seeing the fruition of her efforts, par-
ticularly in her who from her early age
received the greater part of her instruc-
tion, the Princess Cecile Lubomirska,
the rare esteem in which she was
held by this whole noble family, who
after her return to France continued
to come to her for counsel and guid-
ance, the affinity between her up-
right and serious nature and the
minds of the family in which she lived,
caused her to forget the sadness in-
separable from such a position and
the rigors of a climate very unsuited to
her temperament. She became at-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 37

tached to Poland, and particularly to
the Polish peasant, in whom she saw
a good creature, full of high religious
instincts, recalling strongly the Breton
peasant, but less energetic.

The excursions which she made to
Germany and Italy completed her ed-
ucation. She lived at various times at
Varsovie, Vienna and Dresden. Ven-
ice and Florence delighted her; but
it was to Rome that she was attached
most strongly. This city, so deeply
inspiring, led her to regard with seren-
ity the distinction which all philoso-
phical minds must make between true
religion and its particular forms. She
loved to call it with Lord Byron,
" dear city of the soul; " and, like all
strangers who lived there, she had be-
come indulgent even of the foolish

38 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

and puerile formalities of modern
papacy.

III.
In 1845 I left St. Sulpice Seminary.
Thanks to the liberal and thoughtful
mind which presides over this school,
I had carried my philological studies
a great length; my religious belief
was greatly shaken. Henrietta was
again my support. She had advanced
into the breach before me; her faith
in Catholicism had completely dis-
appeared, but she had always care-
fully refrained from exercising the
slightest influence over me on this
subject. When I confided to her the
doubts which tormented me, which
made it my duty to abandon a career
in which absolute faith is required,
she was delighted, and offered to help

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 39

me through the difficult passage. I
entered upon practical life at the age
of twenty-three, old in thought, but
yet a novice, as ignorant of the world
as it is possible to be. Literally I
knew no one; the simple advantages
which even a youth of fifteen might
possess were lacking. I was not even
a Bachelor of Letters. We agreed
that I should seek in the pensions of
Paris an occupation which should mit
au pair, as they say, that is, should
give me board and lodging, leaving
me ample time for work. Twelve
hundred francs which she sent me
would have enabled me to supply all
that such a position required. These
twelve hundred francs have been the
corner-stone of my life. I have never
exhausted them; but the}- have given

4-0 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

me the tranquility of mind necessary
to think at my ease, and prevented
me from experiencing the necessity
which would have stifled me. Her
exquisite letters were at this decisive
moment of my life my consolation
and support.

While I struggled with difficulties,
aggravated by my total inexperience
of the world, her health suffered from
the rigors of the Polish winters. A
chronic affection of the larynx devel-
oped, and became so serious in 1850
that her return was judged necessary.
Besides, her task was accomplished;
our father's debts were entirely paid;
the little property he had left us was
in my mother's hands free from en-
cumbrances; my brother had gained
a position through hard work, which

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 41

promised to bring him wealth. We
decided to live together. In Septem-
ber, 1850, I joined her at Berlin.
These ten years of exile had entirely
transformed her. The wrinkles of
premature old age were traced on her
face; of the charm which she still
had when she bade me adieu in the
parlor of the St. Nicholas Seminary,
nothing remained but the tender ex-
pression of her ineffable goodness.
Then began for us those dear years,
the memory of which melts me to
tears. We took a little suite of
rooms at the end of a garden near
Val-de-grace. Our isolation was com-
plete. She had no acquaintances, nor
did she seek to make any. Our win-
dows looked out on the Carmelite gar-
dens in the rue d'Enfer. The life of

42 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

these recluses during the long hours
which I passed in the library regula-
ted in some degree her own life, and
was her only distraction. She had
the greatest respect for my work. I
have seen her in the evening, while
sitting beside me, hardly daring to
breathe for fear of interrupting me.
Still she wished to see me, and the
door between our two rooms was al-
ways open. Her love had come to
such perfection that the unspoken
communion of our thoughts satisfied
her. She, so exacting, so jealous in
her affection, contented herself with
a few moments' intercourse each day,
providing she but knew she was loved.
Thanks to her rigorous economy, with
extremely limited resources, she made
a home for me, where nothing was

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 43

ever lacking, which even had an aus-
tere grace of its own. Our thoughts
were so perfectly in unison that we
hardly needed to put them into words.
Our general opinions about God and
the world were identical. There was
hardly a shade in the theories that I
advanced at this time which she did
not appreciate. She was in advance
of me on many topics of modern his-
tory, which she had studied at their
sources. The general plan of my
career, the course of inflexible sin-
cerity which I laid down for myself,
was entirely the combined product of
both our consciences, but I should
have been tempted many times to give
up if I had not found her always near
me, like a second self, to recall me to
my duty.

44 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

Her part in the direction of my
ideas was thus very extensive. She was
an incomparable secretary; she copied
all my papers and understood them
so thoroughly that I relied on her as
a living index of my thoughts. She
read proofs of all I wrote and her
precious criticism sought out with in-
finite nicety all the little negligences
which I had not yet noticed. I owe
what excellences of style I have en-
tirely to her. She had acquired great
elegance in writing, the result of her
study of ancient literature, and her
style was so pure and so exact that I
do not believe there could have been a
more ideally perfect diction since
Port-Royale. That rendered her very
severe. She was not willing to admit
any excellence in modern writing,

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 45

and when she saw the essays which I
had composed before our reunion, and
which she had not read while in
Poland, they did but half please her.
She shared the beliefs and she
thought that everyone should express
himself frankly and freely, but the
manner of doing so appeared careless
and abrupt, and she found the attacks
unreasonable, the tone harsh, and the
method of treating the subject disre-
spectful. She convinced me that one
can say anything in the simple and
correct style of good authors and that
new expressions and overdrawn
figures come either from misplaced
conceit or from ignorance of the real
riches of our language. Thus, from
my reunion with her dated a profound
change in my manner of writing. I

46 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

accustomed myself to compose with a
view to her criticism, trying experi-
ments sometimes merely to see the
effect upon her, intending to sacrifice
them if she asked it. This operation
of the mind has become for me, since
she is no more, like the continual
pain in a limb which one knows has
been amputated. She was an organ
of my intellectual life, and it is truly
a part of my own being which is in-
terred with her in the tomb.

We had come to see with the same
eyes and to feel with the same heart
all moral things. She was so thor-
oughly in sympathy with my mode of
thought that she nearly always di-
vined what I was about to say, and
the same idea would occur to us sim-
ultaneously. But in one sense she

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 47

surpassed me very much. In spirit-
ual things I still sought material for
interesting attacks or artistic studies;
nothing tarnished the purity of her
inner communion with the good.
Her truly religious nature would not
suffer the least discordant note. One
feature which wounded her in my
writings was an ironical tendency
that took possession of me and which
I mingled with better things. I had
never suffered, and I thought it a
sign of philosophy to smile discreetly
at the weakness or vanity of man.
This habit wounded her, and, little by
little, I sacrificed it to her. Now do I
recognize her wisdom. The good
should be simply good, all kinds of
ridicule imply the remains of vanity
or personal scorn, and are a sign of
bad taste.

48 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

Her faith was of the purest. She
rejected absolutely the supernatural,
but she retained the warmest attach-
ment for Christianity. It was not ex-
actly Protestantism which pleased
her, but a larger faith. She pre-
served most tender memories of
Catholicism, of her chants and psalms,
and the pious observances in which
her childhood had been cradled. She
was a saint without the precise and
narrow ceremonies and symbols.
About a month before her death we
had a conversation upon religious
matters with good Doctor Gaillardot,
upon the terrace in front of our house at
Ghazir. She opposed my inclination
to a belief in a deity without con-
sciousness and a purely ideal immor-
tality. Without being a deist in the

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 49

common acceptation of the word, she
did not wish religion to be reduced to
pure abstraction. In practice, at
least, everything was clear to her.
"Yes," said she to us, "in my last
hour I shall have the consolation of
saying to myself that I have done the
best possible, and if there is anything
which should not be vanity, it is
that."

The exquisite sentiment of her na-
ture was the source of her most re-
fined joy. A beautiful day, a ray of
sunshine, even a flower delighted her.
She appreciated the delicate art of
the great idealistic school, but she
could not endure that brutal or vio-
lent art which had for its object any-
thing but beauty. One circumstance
in particular gave her rare acquaint-

50 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

ance with the art of the middle ages.
She collected for me all the facts on
the condition of the fine arts of the
Fourteenth century which form a part
of Volume XXIV of " The Literary
History of France." For these facts
she searched with patience and ad-
mirable accuracy through all the
great archeological collections that
had been published in the last half
century, selecting all that belonged to
the subject. The notes that she made
at this same time were so full of dis-
cernment that I nearly always
adopted them. To complete our
researches we made a journey to-
gether into the country where Gothic
art was formed, in Vexin, Valois,
Beauvoises, into the region of Noyon
of Layon, and Rheims. She dis-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 51

played in those occupations which
interested her, surprising activity.
Her ideal was a laborious, obscure
life surrounded by affection. She
often repeated the words of Thomas
a Kempis: "In angelo cum libello."
She passed many happy hours in
these tranquil occupations. Her
mind was full of serenity then, and
her heart, ordinarily anxious, was full
of peace. Her capacity for work was
prodigious. I have seen her bend
incessantly over the same task for
days together. She assisted in edit-
ing a journal of education conducted
by her friend Mdlle. Ulliac-Treana-
deure. She never signed her own
name, and it was impossible, with
such great modesty, for her to be
known and appreciated, save by a

52 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

very few. The detestable taste that
prevails in France in text-books in-
tended for the education of woman
did not lead her to hope for either
great satisfaction or great success.
She undertook this work solely to
oblige her old and infirm friend. Her
letters showed her true character
more than anything else; she wrote
them to perfection. Her notes on her
travels also were excellent. I left it
to her to relate the non-scientific part
of our journey in the Orient. Alas!
all the account of our expedition
which I confided to her perished with
her. What I found on the subject
among her papers is very good. We
hope to be able to publish them with
her letters. We shall publish, too,
an account which she wrote of the

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 53

great maritime expeditions of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She
had made very extended researches
for this work, and had brought to it
skill very rare in books intended for
children. She did nothing half-way.
The uprightness of her judgment
showed itself by her exquisite taste
for the true and the good.

She had not what we call wit, if we
mean by that something light and
mocking, after the manner of the
French. She never sneered at any-
one. Malice was odious to her, she
saw something painful in it. I re-
member that at a pardon of lower Brit-
tany, where we went in a boat, our
bark was preceded by another filled
with poor women, who, wishing to
make themselves fine for the/^/r.had

54 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

made cheap toilettes in very bad
taste. Those who were with us
laughed at them, and the poor wom-
en saw it. I saw my sister bathed in
tears. To overwhelm with jests good
people who thus tried to forget for
the moment their misfortunes, and who
perhaps put themselves to inconven-
ience out of deference to the public,
seemed barbarous to her. In her
eyes, to be ridiculous was to be pitied;
from that time she loved such a one
and defended him against all raillery.
This accounted for her indifference
to the world and her inability to carry
on ordinary conversation, nearly al-
ways a tissue of malice and frivolity.
She was prematurely old, and she ex-
aggerated her age by her costume
and manners. She possessed a kind

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 55

of religion of misfortune; she received
and cultivated nearly every oppor-
tunity for weeping; sadness was a
second nature to her. Generally
common people could not understand
her and found her stiff and embar-
rassing. Nothing but what was en-
tirely good pleased her. Everything
must be genuinely good with her.
She did not know how to dissemble.
The country people, the peasants, on
the contrary, discovered her exquisite
kindness, and people who knew how
to approach her saw very quickly
the depth of her nature and her great
distinction.

Sometimes she was charmingly fem-
inine; she became a young girl again;
she looked on life smilingly, and
her inadaptability to the world seemed

56 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

to trouble her. The flying moments
of delightful helplessness, fleeting
gleams of a vanished morning, were
full of melancholy sweetness for her.
In that regard she was superior to
people who profess a gloomy abhor-
ence of the world. She loved life;
she enjoyed it; she could smile at a
jewel or some feminine trifle, as one
smiles at a flower. She had not said
to nature that abrenuntio of the as-
cetic Christian. Virtue for her was
not a strong tension, a forced effort;
it was the natural instinct of a beau-
tiful soul reaching out after the good
spontaneously, serving God without
fear or trembling.

Thus we lived for six years a very
pure, elevated life. My position
was always extremely modest, but she

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 57

wished it so. She would not allow
it even when I desired to sacrifice the
least portion of my independence for
my promotion. The misfortune which
overwhelmed our brother and carried
with it the results of all our little
economics, did not shake her. She
would have taken up life again among
strangers, had it been necessary for my
complete development. My God!
did I do everything I could to make
her happy? With what bitterness I
reproach myself now for not having
been more expansive, for not having
told her how much I loved her, for
having yielded too much to my taste
for quiet concentration, and for not
putting to better use each hour in
which she was left to me. Oh! if I
could live over one of those moments

58 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

in which I failed to make her happy;
but I call her vanished soul to witness,
she was always at the depths of my
heart, that she reigned over my whole
life as no one else ever did, that she
was always the center of my sorrow
and my joys. If I sinned toward her,
it was owing to a certain coldness of
manner which people who know me
do not regard, and through a deep
sentiment of respect for her in which
any demonstration of affection would
seem out of place. She always held
this place in my esteem. My long
clerical education, four years of abso-
lutely solitary life, had given me this
cast of character, and her delicate re-
serve hindered her from combatting
it as much as some might have
done.

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 59

IV.

My inexperience of life, my pro-
found ignorance of the difference be-
tween a man's heart and a woman's,
led me at this time to demand a sac-
rifice which would have been too great
for any other than she. The strong
feeling of duty I had toward such a
friend was too deep for it to occur to
me to change my condition without
her consent. But she herself took
the initiative, with her accustomed
nobility of heart. From the first days
of our reunion she had urged me to
marry. She often returned to the
subject, she had even spoken, with-
out my knowledge, to one of our
friends, of a union she had planned
for me. The course she took in this
matter led me into serious error. I

60 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

really thought that she would not be
wounded when I told her that I had
chosen a person worthy of being asso-
ciated with her. In allowing me to
speak of marriage, I never understood
that she would leave me. I had
thought that she would remain, my
accomplished and beloved sister, in-
capable of giving or taking offense,
so completely assured of the love
which I felt for her that she would
not be hurt by that given to another.
I see now the error of such belief.
Woman does not love like a man; her
affection is exclusive and jealous; she
does not admit that there may be di-
versity in the nature of love. But I
was excusable; I was deceived by my
extreme simplicity of heart, and also
a little by her. Is it not possible that

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 6l

she was deceived as to her own
strength? I believe so. When the
marriage which she sought to arrange
for me was set aside, she felt a certain
regret, although the project had in
some respect ceased to please her.
But, oh, mysterious heart of woman!
The sacrifice she had prepared to
make became too severe when it was
offered to her. She had not objected
to the chalice of absinthe which her
own hands had prepared; she hesi-
tated now before that which was
offered her, though I had used all my
skill to render it sweet. Terrible
consequence of exaggerated delicacy!
This brother and sister, so dear to
each other, because they had not
spoken frankly had one day fallen
unwittingly into difficulties and mu-

62 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

tual misunderstandings. Those were
bitter days for us. We experienced
all the storms possible to such love
as ours. When she said to me that
in proposing marriage for me she had
but wished to ascertain whether or
not she was sufficient for my happi-
ness, when she announced that the
moment of my union with another
would be the moment of her depart-
ure, death entered into my soul. Are
we to understand that the feeling she
experienced was simple opposition,
that she really wished to put an ob-
stacle in the way of my happiness?
Certainly not. It was the tempest of
a passionate soul, the revolt of too
loving a heart. When she and Mdlle.
Cornelia Scheffer saw each other, they
conceived an affection which later

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 63

became very strong in both. The
grand and courtly manners of Mon-
sieur Ary Scheffer inspired and ele-
vated her. She realized that there was
no place here for little trivialities and
petty meanness. She wished it, but
at the decisive moment the woman in
her rebelled; she had not the strength
to proceed.

At last one day I was forced to end
this cruel anguish. Compelled to
choose between two affections, I sac-
rificed everything to the older, to that
which seemed most my duty. I an-
nounced to Mdlle. Scheffer that I
could never see her again, as the
affection of my dear sister was too
severely tried. That was in the even-
ing. I returned and told my sister
what I had done. She experienced a

64 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

sudden revulsion of feeling; cruel re-
morse seized her for having hindered
an alliance desired by me and highly
appreciated by herself. She hastened
early the next morning to M. Schef-
fer's; she passed long hours with my
fiancee. They wept together, and
parted the warmest of friends. In
short, after my marriage, as before,
we enjoyed everything in common.
It was her economics which rendered
our young menage possible. With-
out her I should not have been able
to face my new duties. My naive
confidence in her goodness was such
that the simplicity of such conduct
did not appear to me till much later.
We had periods of happiness; but
often, still, the cruel and charming
demon of loving anxiety, of jealousy,

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 65

of sudden revolts and speedy repent-
ances, all the passions of a woman's
heart, awoke to torture her. Often
the idea of separating herself from
the life where she assumed, in her
hour of bitterness, that she had be-
come useless, was spoken of sadly;
but these were only the remains of
bad dreams which faded away, little by
little. The delicate tact, the tender
heart of her whom I had given her
for a sister, finally triumphed. In
these moments of melancholy, the
charming intervention of Cornelia,
her natural and graceful gayety,
changed our tears into smiles; it ended
in mutual embraces. The upright-
ness of heart and conscience devel-
oped before me by those two women,
in dealing with the most delicate

66 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

problem of love, compelled my ad-
miration. The naive hope that I had
of seeing another than myself com-
plete her happiness by introducing
into her life the gayety and activity
that I had not known how to put
there, found itself momentarily real-
ized. More fortunate than prudent,
I saw my rashness turned into wisdom
and I tasted the fruit of my temerity.
The birth of my little Ary finished
her cure. Her affection for the child
amounted to genuine worship. The
maternal instinct which had lain dor-
mant within found here its natural
outlet. Her sweetness, her inex-
haustible patience, her taste for all
that was good and simple inspired
her with unspeakable tenderness for
childhood. It was a sort of religious

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 67

worship in which her melancholy na-
ture found infinite charm. When my
second child was born, a little girl
who lived only a few months, she said
several times that this little one had
come to replace her with me. She
loved the thought of death, and had
a thousand fancies about it. "You
will see, dear friends," she said to us,
"that the little flower we have lost
will leave its fragrance with us." The
image of this little dead child was a
sacred thing to her for a long time.
Thus, mingling in our joys and sor-
rows with all the strength of her ex-
quisite sensibility, she made the new
life into which I had led her, com-
pletely her own. I count as one of
my greatest blessings, to have been
able to realize, by means of the two

68 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

women that Fate had connected with
my life, an ideal of abnegation and
pure devotion. They loved each
other warmly, and to-day I am con-
soled by sympathy and grief beside
me, almost equal to my own. Each
one of them had her own particular
place near me, which she held un-
shared and exclusive. Each one of
them was in her own way everything
to me. Some days before her death,
when she felt a presentiment of her
approaching end, my sister spoke to
me in a way that showed that all
wounds were healed, and that noth-
ing remained of past bitterness.
V.
When the Emperor, in May, i860,
offered me a scientific mission in an-
cient Phoenicia, she was one of the

MY .-ISTER HENRIETTA. 69

first to advise me to accept it. Her
political opinions were those of the
extreme liberals, but she thought that
all party feeling should be put aside
where there was some important plan
to be carried out, or where there was
any danger expected. It was decided
immediately that she should accom-
pany me. Accustomed to her and to
her excellent collaboration, I needed
her, besides, to keep the accounts
and watch over expenses. She gave
the most painstaking attention to this,
and, thanks to her, I was able for an
entire year to give my whole atten-
tion to a very complicated enterprise
without being hindered a moment by
material cares. Her activity aston-
ished everyone. Undoubtedly, with-
out her I should have been unable to

70 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

carry out the, perhaps, too extensive
program which I had marked out for
myself.

She did not leave me for a moment.
Upon the steepest heights of Lebanon
and in the valley of the Jordan she
followed me, step by step, saw all that
I saw. If I had died she would have
been able to give as good an account
as I. She was never hindered by the
frightful mountain paths nor the pri-
vations inseparable from this kind of
an exploration. A thousand times,
seeing her on the edge of a fearful
precipice, my heart failed me. She
rode horseback with remarkable en-
durance, traveling eight and ten hours
a day. Her health, usually very del-
icate, sustained by the energy of her
will, endured much, but her whole

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 71

nervous system received a shock
which betrayed itself by violent at-
tacks of neuralgia. Two or three
times, in the midst of the desert, she
fell into a condition which alarmed
us greatly. Her courage did not de-
ceive us. She had embraced my plan
of work so heartily that nothing could
separate her from me until it was
finished.

This journey was for her the source
of very keen enjoyment. It was, to
tell the truth, almost the only year
she had ever spent without tears, and
the sole recompense of her life. She
was delighted with everything she
saw. She abandoned herself to the
sensations of this new world with the
simple joy of a child. Nothing can
equal the charm of Syria in spring-

72 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

time and autumn. The balmy air
penetrates everything and seems to
communicate some of its freshness to
life itself. Lovely flowers, principally
beautiful cyclamens, grow on each
rocky hillside; in the plains, on the
coast of Amrit and Tortosa, the horses'
feet trampled upon a thick carpet of
the rarest flowers of our gardens.
The waters which flow down the rug-
ged side of the mountains form a
most intoxicating contrast.

Our first stop was at the village of
Amschit, three quarters of a mile
from Gebeil (Byblos), founded twenty-
five or thirty years ago by the rich
Maronite Michael Tobia. Zakhia,
Michael's successor, made this visit
extremely agreeable. He gave us a
pretty house that looked out over

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 73

Byblos and the sea. The gentle man-
ners of the inhabitants, their daily at-
tentions, the affection they conceived
for us, and particularly for my sister,
touched her profoundly. She loved
to revisit this village, and we made it
a sort of center of action while we
were in that region. The village of
Sarba, near Djouni, where the good
honest Khadra family lived, well
known to all the Frenchmen who
have traveled in the Orient, became
also a favorite spot with her. The
delicious baths of Kesrouan, with its
surrounding villages, its convents
hanging from each summit, its moun-
tains plunging into the sea, its pure
waves dashing against the rocks, de-
lighted her. Every time that we is-
sued out from the rocks on the north,

74 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

as we came from Gebeil, a hymn of
joy burst from her heart. She be-
came greatly attached to the Mar-
onites. Her visit to the convent of
Bkerke, where lived the patriarch in
the midst of his diocese of rural sim-
plicity, she always remembered agree-
ably. On the contrary, she took a
great dislike to the petty European
gossip of Bayreuth and the worthless-
ness of the towns where Mussulmans
of the type of Saida governed.

The grand spectacles which she
saw at Tyre enchanted her. She oc-
cupied a high pavilion where she was
literally swayed by the tempests.
The nomadic life, in the long run so
attractive, became very dear to her.
My wife invented new pretexts every
evening to dissuade her from remain-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 75

ing alone in her tent. She yielded,
though resisting a little. She was
very happy in this narrow, homelike
atmosphere, near those who loved
her, although in the midst of savage
immensity. But it was above all her
trip to Palestine which filled her with
enthusiasm. Jerusalem with its won-
derful memories; the beautiful valley
of Naplouse, Carmel covered with the
blossoms of springtime, and more
than all Galilee, though devastated,
still an earthly paradise, where the
Divine breath is still felt, kept her for
six weeks under a charm. We had
already made several excursions of six
and eight days to Tyre and Oum-el-
awamid, those ancient grounds of
Aser and Nephtali, which have wit-
nessed such wonderful deeds. When

76 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

I showed her Kasyoum for the first
time, above Lake Huleh, the whole
region of the upper Jordan, and, in the
distance, Lake Gennesaret, the cradle
of Christianity, she thanked me and
told me I had given her the greatest
treat of her life in showing her these
places. Superior to that narrow sen-
timent which attaches historical leg-
ends to material objects, nearly al-
ways apocryphal, or to particular
localities which often have not a
single claim to veneration, she
sought the soul, the idea, the general
impression. Our long journeys in
this beautiful country, always in view
of Hermon, whose ravines were
marked in sunny lines against the
azure sky, have remained in our mem-
ory as a vision of another world.

<

X
O

to

o

>
<

CO

W
X
H

M\ SISTER HENRIETTA. 77

In the mouth of July, my wife, who
had been with us since January, was
obliged to leave us for other duties.
The excavations were finished and the
fleet had left Syria. We remained
alone together to watch the removal
of the excavated objects, to finish the
exploration of the heights of Lebanon
and prepare for a last campaign into
Cyprus, the following autumn. I re-
gret now, with the most bitter tears,
the part that I took in thus prolong-
ing our stay during the months which
are the most dangerous to the Euro-
pean in Syria. Our last trip to Leb-
anon fatigued her greatly. We stayed
three days at Maschuaka, near the
Adonis river, lodged in a mudhouse.
The constant change from cold val-
leys to hot mountains, the poor food,

78 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

the necessity of spending the nights
in low huts where, not to stifle, every-
thing must be left open, gave her the
germ of a nervous disease which soon
developed. Coming out of the deep
valley of Tannourin, after having
slept in the convent of Mar-akout,
upon one of the highest points of this
locality, we entered into the burning
region of Toula. This sudden change
prostrated us. About eleven o'clock,
in the village of Helta, she began to
suffer keenly. I made her lie down
in the humble house of the cure; then,
while I went to gather up the inscrip-
tions, she tried to sleep in the oratory.
But the women of the country would
not let her rest; they came in to look
at her and to touch her. At last we
reached Toula. There she passed

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 79

two days of horrible suffering. We
were without any assistance. The
extreme simplicity of the inhabitants
added to her sufferings. Never hav-
ing seen a European, they invaded
the house, and while I was out in my
explorations, they tormented her un-
endurably. As soon as she could ride
on horseback we went to Amschit,
where she obtained some relief. But
her left eye was affected; the sight of
this eye was weakened, and at times
she suffered from diplopia.

The horrible heat of that coast and
our state of great fatigue decided me
to fix our residence at Ghazir, a point
situated at a great elevation above
the sea, near the bath of Kesrouan.
We took leave of the good people of
Amschit and G6beil. The sun was

80 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

setting when we arrived at the mouth
of the Adonis river; we rested there.
Although she was far from well,
the entrancing calm of this beautiful
spot took possession of her; she had a
moment of mild gayety. We climbed
the Ghazir mountain by the light of
the moon; she was very happy, and
we thought, as we left the burning
river behind us, that we were leaving
also the suffering we had found there.
Ghazir is without exception one of
the most beautiful spots in the world.
The surrounding valleys are covered
with the loveliest verdure, and the
hill of Oramoun that towers above it
is the most charming place in all
Lebanon; but the population, spoiled
by intercourse with the pretended
aristocracy of the country, does not

X

w

c

X

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 8 1

possess the good qualities of the ordin-
ary Maronite people. We found a lit-
tle house with a pretty arbor, and
there we spent several days quietly
resting.

We had the cool snow water that
flowed down the crevasses on the
mountain side. Our poor traveling
companions, her noble Arabian mare,
and my old mule, Saida, pastured
under our eyes. For the first fifteen
days she suffered a great deal; then
her pain abated and God allowed her
to pass a few happy hours before she
left this earth.

The memory of these days is inex-
pressibly dear to me. The tedious
difficulties inseparable from our work
were over, and we had much leisure.
I resolved to write out all the thoughts

82 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

upon the Life of Jesus that had been
slowly gathering in my mind during
our stay in the countries of Tyre and
Palestine.

When I read the gospels in Galilee,
the personality of this great Founder
came clearly before me. In the heart
of the profoundest repose possible to
be imagined, I wrote, with the help of
the Gospels and Josephus, a life of
Jesus which at Ghazir I carried to the
time of his trip to Jerusalem; delight-
ful, too soon vanished hours. Oh!
may eternity be like you! From
morning till night I was fairly intox-
icated with the thoughts that rose
within me. They were with me in
my sleeping hours, and when the first
rays of the sun appeared over the tops
of the mountains they became clearer,

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 83

more distinct than ever. Henrietta
was more confident each day of the
success of my work. As soon as I wrote
a page she copied it. "This book,"
she said " I shall love: at first be-
cause we have written it together and
then because it pleases me." Her
mind had never been clearer. In the
evening we walked together on the
terrace, in the starlight, while she
talked with much feeling and depth,
conversations that were like revela-
tions to me. Her joy seemed full, and
these were no doubt the happiest
moments of her life. Our intellectual
and moral communion was now more
complete than ever before. She told
me several times that these days were
her paradise. There was a feeling of
sadness mingled with it all. Her

84 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

malady was only dormant and awoke
occasionally to remind her of its fatal
existence. She pitied herself then
because fate was relentless to her and
grudged her even a few hours of hap-
iness, the first she had ever known.

In the first part of September, my
stay at Ghazir was very incon-
venient, because my presence was de-
manded at Bayreuth. We bade fare-
well, not without tears, to our little
house at Ghazir and traversed for the
last time that charming route along
the banks of the Chien river, that for
the last year had been so familiar to
us. Although the heat was great, we
passed some pleasant hours at Bay-
reuth. The days were oppressive but
the nights were delightful, and every
evening the view of Sannin, gilded by

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 85

the rays of the setting sun in the
Olympian air, was a feast to the eye.
The arrangements for transportation
were nearly completed, only the trip
to Cyprus remained. We began to
speak of returning. We dreamed al-
ready of the pale sunlight, the
damp, fresh autumn breeze on the
banks of the Oise, where we had been
two years ago at this time. She
longed once more to embrace little
Ary and our old mother. She had
moments of melancholy retrospection
when recollections of our father came
to her. She spoke of his noble, good
heart, so full of tenderness. I never
saw her more exalted, more attractive.
Sunday, September 15, Admiral Le
Barbierde Tirian sent me word that
the Caton would devote eight days to

86 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

new efforts for the excavation of two
great sarcophagi, at Gebeil, whose
disenterment had at first been deemed
impossible. My presence at Gebeil
was not necessary; it would have
been sufficient for me to go on board
the Caton, give the necessary direc-
tions and return to Bayreuth by
land. But I knew these separations
were painful to her. So, as she liked
to visit Amschit so well, I formed
another plan for both of us to go to
Amschit on the Caton, spend the
eight days there, and return in the
same way. We started on Monday.
She had not been well since the day
before, but the trip seemed to benefit
her. She enjoyed the view of Leb-
anon in the splendor of its summer
dress; and when I went with the com-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 87

manderto give directions concerning
the sarcophagus, she rested quietly on
board. In the evening, after sunset,
we went to Amschit. Our good
friends there, who never expected to
see us again, welcomed us with open
arms. She was very happy. After
dinner we passed a part of the night
on the terrace in front of Zakhia's
house. The heavens were beautiful.
I recalled that passage in the book of
Job where the old patriarch boasts as
of some rare merit, that he had never
put his hand over his mouth in sign of
worship, when ho beheld the stars in
their splendor and the moon as she
moved majestically through the heav-
ens. All the ancient faiths of Syria
seemed to rise up before us. Byblos
was at our feet; to the south in sacred

88 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

Lebanon, the strange, sharp peaks of
the rocks and forests of Dj6bel-
Mousa, where legend places the death
of Adonis, stood out before us. At
the north, toward Byblos, the sea
seemed to curve around and lie on
two sides of us. That was the last
really happy day of my life. Hence-
forth all joy carried me into the past
and recalled that which no longer ex-
isted for me. Tuesday she was not so
well. Still I felt no anxiety; this in-
disposition did not seem nearly as
serious as others she had endured. I
went to work again, enthusiastically,
upon my Life of Jesus. We worked
together all day and the evening was
spent gaily on the terrace. On
Wednesday she grew worse. I begged
the surgeon on the Caton to come

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 89

and see her. Thursday she was in
the same condition. But, sad to re-
late, I was stricken in my turn. I had
reached the end of my work without
any serious illness. By a fatality,
whose remembrance pursues me like
some frightful nightmare, the only
moment in which I lost conscious-
ness was that in which I should have
watched over her death bed.

I was obliged on Thursday morn-
ing to go down the road to G6beil to
confer with the commander. When
I started up the hill to Amschit I felt
overcome by the sun, whose fiery rays
were reflected from the rocks on the
hillside. That afternoon I had a vio-
lent attack of fever, accompanied with
severe neuralgic pains. It was, in
fact, a mild type of the same disease

go MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

that killed my poor sister. The physi-
cian on the Caion, skillful as he was,
did not recognize it. These deadly
fevers have in Syria certain symp-
toms that only native doctors are able
to recognize. Large doses of sulphate
of quinine might, perhaps, have saved
us both. That evening I felt my
mind wandering. I told the doctor
of this symptom, but he, completely
blinded as to the nature of our malady,
left us. I had then a frightful feel-
ing of apprehension, that three days
afterward became a terrible realit}'.
I foresaw with a chill of horror the
dangers that we ran if we fell ill there
alone, lost consciousness in the hands
of people, good but ignorant of all
medical knowledge, and full of the
wildest ideas on the subject. I said

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 91

good-bye to life with the greatest
grief. The loss of my papers, par-
ticularly my Life of Jesus, seemed
certain to me. We passed a dread-
ful night; it seemed at that time,
though, that my sister's condition was
not as bad as my own, for I remem-
ber she said the next morning, "You
groaned all night long."

Friday, Saturday and Sunday pass
before me like the portions of a pain-
ful dream. The sudden attack that
just failed to prove fatal to me on
Thursday, had a kind of retro-active
effect, and entirely effaced all memory
of the three preceding days. A sad
fatality ordained that the physician
should see us in these moments of
comparative ease, and so not be at all
prepared for the approaching crisis.

92 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

I was still at work, but I felt as if
I were working badly. I was then
in the midst of the Lord's Passion,
the story of the Last Supper. Later,
as I re-read the words I had written,
I found them strangely troubled.
My thoughts seemed to flow in an
endless circle, to revolve aimlessly,
like the broken wheels of some in-
strument. Other little circumstances
remain in my memory. I wrote to
the Sisters of Charity at Bayreuth to
ask for some wine of quinquina, that
they alone know how to make in all
Syria; but I felt the incoherence of my
letter, myself. It seemed that neither
of us appreciated the severity of our
illness. I decided to go to France on
the following Thursday. " Yes, yes,
we will go," she said, confidently.

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 93

"Oh! unfortunate that I am," she
said, at another time. " I see I am
destined to surfer a great deal." On
one of these two days she was able to
go from one room to the other, about
sunset. She lay down on the sofa in
the salon where I slept and worked as
usual. The blinds were open, our
eyes looked out toward Djebel-Mousa.
She had a presentiment then of her
approaching end, but did not think it
so near. Her eyes were dissolved in
tears; her face drawn with suffering,
regained a little color, and she glanced
back sadly, sweetly, over her past life.
" I will make my will," she said.
'■ You shall be my heir; I shall leave
very little, but still it is something.
I want you to build a burial vault
with my savings; it will seem to bring

94 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

us together, to be near each other.
Little Ernestine must be with us."
Then she calculated mentally, laid
out with her finger the inner arrange-
ment of this tomb, and seemed to
want places for a dozen people. She
spoke to me with sobs of my little
Ary, of our old mother. She told
me what I should give her niece.
She tried to find something that would
please Cornelia, and she thought of a
little Italian book (the Frosetti of
St. Francis) that M. Berthelol had
given her. "I have loved you very
much," she said, finally. "Some-
times my affection has caused you
pain. I have been unjust, jealous;
but it has been because I have loved
you as one seldom is, perhaps as one
should not be, loved."

MY SIS I IK HENRIETTA. 95

I burst into tears. I spoke of little
Ary, knowing that it would touch her.
She was interested and touched by
these words. She recalled again the
memory of our father. These were
our last lucid moments. We were in
the interval between two attacks of
the deadly fever. The final attack
was only a few hours away. Except
for the moments the doctor was there,
we were alone with only our Arabian
servants and the natives from the vil-
lage; everyone else at the mission was
absent or occupied. I remember but
little distinctly of that fatal Sunday,
or, rather, others have recalled almost
forgotten incidents to me. I contin-
to work all day, but like an autom-
aton, which acts mechanically. I re-
member exactly how 1 felt when I

96 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

saw the peasants going to mass.
Generally, when they knew we were
there, they came to us at that hour
for a little _/>/<?. The doctor came in
the morning. We decided that the
next day before dawn they should
send some sailors from the Caton
with a litter to carry my sister, and
that we should be taken at once to
Bayreuth. Toward noon I must have
been still working in my dear one's
room, for they told me they found
my books and notes scattered there
over the matting, where I was accus-
tomed to sit. In the afternoon my
sister became much worse. I wrote
to the doctor to come immediately,
telling him the worst fears of my
heart. I remember nothing of this
letter, and when they mentioned it to

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 97

me, several days after, it awoke no
memory within me. I was still con-
scious, however, for Antoine, the
servant, told me I helped carry my
sister into the salon that had been
my chamber, and that I had sat by
her a long time. Perhaps, at that
time, we said our eternal farewells,
and she addressed sacred words to
me, which the terrible sponge, the
disease, passed over my brain — effaced
forever. Antoine assured me that she
did not have a single moment of con-
sciousness of her death, but he was
not intelligent, and knew so little
French that he may not have known
what we said to each other.

The physician came about six
o'clock, accompanied by the com-
mander. Both thought it would be

g8 MV SISTER HENRIETTA.

impossible to take my sister to Bay-
reuth the next day. By a strange
coincidence I was stricken while they
were there; I lost consciousness in
the commander's arms. These two
people, full of judgment and discre-
tion, but until then deceived as to the
gravity of our condition, took counsel
together. The doctor, owning frankly
that he felt himself incapable of cop-
ing with the disease, whose symptoms
had escaped him, asked the com-
mander to send to Bayreuth for more
help, as soon as possible. The ad-
miral did so. On account of the
Turkish formalities which, with sail-
ors of other countries have no
weight, they did not get off till four
o'clock Monday morning. They ar-
rived at Bayreuth at six o'clock, and

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 99

saw Admiral Paris, who, with the rare
courtesy peculiar to him, ordered
them to return at once, taking with
them Dr. Lovell, chief surgeon on
board the Alzesiras, and Dr. Suquet,
the French sanitary physician at
Bayreuth, whom everyone recognizes
as one of the greatest authorities on
Syrian diseases.

At half-past ten, all these gentlemen
were at Amschit, and about the same
time Dr. Gaillardot arrived overland.
Since the evening before, we had both
lain unconscious, facing each other in
Zakhia's great salon, cared for by
Antoine alone. The good Zakhia
family was sitting around, weeping,
defending us against the half crazy
curtf who made pretentions to medi-
cine. They assured me that my sis-

IOO MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

ter had made no sign of consciousness
in all that time. Dr. Suquet, who
naturally took charge of affairs, real-
ized, alas! very soon, that it was too
late to do anything for her; all at-
tempts to bring on a reaction were in
vain. The large doses of sulphate of
quinine, which is the great remedy in
crises of this sort, could not be ab-
sorbed. Would it have been possible
that, if she had had this care some
hours earlier, she might have been
saved? One cruel thought at least
will always pursue me. If we had
remained at Bayreuth, the crisis might
not have been avoided, but in all
probability, if Dr. Suquet had been
called in time, he might have con-
quered it.

All day Monday my noble, tender

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. IOI

sister lay dying. She expired on
Tuesday, September 24th, at three
o'clock in the morning. The Maro-
nite cure', called in at the last moment,
administered the sacrament. Sin-
cere tears were shed over her
body; but O, God! who could have
thought that one day my sister Hen-
rietta would have died two feet away
from me and that I should not have
been able to receive her last sigh!
Yes, but for that fatal swoon which
seized me Sunday evening. I believe
that my kisses, the sound of my voice
would have held her departing spirit
for at least some hours, perhaps till
help could have reached her. I can-
not persuade myself that her loss of
consciousness was so deep that I
could not have overcome it. Two or

102 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

three times in a delirium of fever I
had a horrible suspicion. I thought
I heard her call me from the tomb
where she was laid. The presence of
the French doctors at the time of her
death do away with this terrible doubt,
but that she should have been cared
for by others, that servile hands
should have touched her, that I had
not conducted her funeral, and at-
tested by my tears that this was my
beloved sister; that she should not
have seen my face, if for the one mo-
ment her eye gazed with the light of
reason upon the world that she was
leaving; this is the thought that
weighs eternally upon me, and em-
bitters all my joy. If she knew she
was dying without me near her, if she
knew that I lay stretched in agony by

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 103

her side, and that she could not care
for me. O, this heavenly creature
must have died with the agonies of
the lost in her heart. The states of
unconsciousness vary so in outward
appearance that I have never been
able to relieve myself of this doubt.
Less exhausted than my sister, I
was able to take the enormous dose
of quinine which they gave me. I
showed some signs of life on Tuesday
morning, an hour or so before my
sister expired. What proves to my
mind that during Sunday and even
during my delirium I was better aware
of what was passing around me than
my memory now recalls, is the fact
that the first question I asked was
about my sister. "She is very ill,"
they replied. I repeated, in my partial

104 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

delirium, the same question inces-
santly. "She is dead," they said at
last; it was useless to try and deceivo
me, for they were getting ready to
take me to Bayreuth. I begged that
they would let me see her; they refused
me absolutely; they carried me away
on the same litter they had brought
up for her. I was completely
stunned; the frightful misfortune
which had overtaken me seemed like
some horrible hallucination. Burn-
ing thirst devoured me. In my dreams
I went with her to Aphaca at the
source of the river Adonis, under the
gigantic walnut trees which are below
the cascade. She was seated near
me upon the fresh grass. I carried a
cupful of icy water to her dying lips;
we both plunged into the cool foun-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 105

tain and wept tears of tender melan-
choly. Not until two days afterward
did I regain my senses entirely, and
my misfortune rose before me in all
its frightful reality.

Dr. Gaillardot remained at Amschit
to watch over the funeral of my poor
sister. The whole population of the
village, who were greatly attached to
her, followed her coffin. All facilities
for embalming were wanting, so they
were obliged to decide upon a tempor-
ary resting place. Zakhia offered ihe
tomb of Michael Tobia, situated at the
extremity of the village, near a pretty
chapel, under the shade of beautiful
palms. He only asked that when
they carried her awa)', an inscription
should be placed there that a French
woman had been buried in that place.

106 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

She is still there. I hesitate to take
her away from those beautiful moun-
tains where she passed such happy
moments in the midst of the good
people she loved to lay her in one of
our gloomy cemeteries which always
filled her with horror. One day I
wish her to be laid near me; but who
can tell in what corner of the earth he
will repose! So she still waits forme
under the palm trees of Amschit, in the
land of ancient mystery near the
sainted Byblos.

We are ignorant of the relations of
great souls to the Infinite; but if, as
nearly all believe, the spirit is but a
transitory inhabitant of the universe,
that which connects us more or less
with the bosom of God, is it not for
such souls as this that immortality is

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 107

made? If man has the power to
mould, after a divine model which he
has not chosen, a great moral person-
ality, made up in equal parts of him-
self and the ideal, that which lives in
reality is assuredly the spirit. It is
not matter which exists, since that is
not a whole; it is not the atom, since
that is lifeless. It is the spirit which
is, when it has left some trace on the
eternal history of the true and good.
Who accomplished this high destiny
more nearly than my dear one ? Taken
away at the moment when her nature
had reached its fullest maturity, she
was never more perfect. She had
attained the summit of a virtuous life;
her views on life could not have been
broader; her measure of devotion and
tenderness was full.

108 MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

Ah! Undoubtedly she should have
been much happier than she was. I
dream of little sweet rewards for
her, I conceive a thousand fancies
that would have pleased her. I see
her old, respected as a mother, proud
of me, resting at last in unmixed
peace. I wish that this good, noble
heart which always bled with tender-
ness, could have known some kind of
calm, some selfish return, * I am
tempted to say. But God willed that
she should tread only steep and rug-
ged paths. She died almost without
reward. The hour when she should
reap what she had sown, when she
should seat herself in the cool of
the day to think over past sorrows
and trials, never sounded for her.

Truly she never thought of recom-

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. IOg

pense. That selfishness which often
spoils devotion inspired by positive
religions, leading one to believe that
he should practice virtue for the gain
he draws from it, never entered into
her great soul. When she lost her
religious faith, her faith in duty did
not diminish, because it was the echo
of her inner nobility. Virtue with
her was not the result of a theory,
but of her nature. She did good for
the sake of the good and not for her
own safety. She loved the true and
beautiful, without that selfish calcula-
tion which seems to say to God,
" Were it not for Thy hell or Thy
heaven I would not love Thee."

But God will not suffer his saints
to see corruption. Oh, heart where
burned incessantly the pure flame of

IIO MY SISTER HENRIETTA.

love! Brain, the seat of the purest
thoughts ! Charming eyes where good-
ness always glowed; slender, delicate
hand that I have so often held in
mine, I shudder when I think you are
but dust But all here is only symbol
and imagery. The truly eternal part
of each is his relation to Infinity. It
is in the memory of God that man is
immortal. It is there that our Hen-
rietta, never more radiant, nevermore
spotless, lives a thousand times more
really than when here below she
struggled in spite of her physical
feebleness to create a spiritual life,
and when, cast into the midst of a
world, she sought perfection patiently.
May her memory remain with us as a
precious argument for those eternal
truths that each virtuous life helps to

MY SISTER HENRIETTA. Ill

demonstrate. I have never doubted
a moral order of things, but I see
now, beyond a doubt, that the whole
system would be overthrown if such
lives as hers were only illusion and
deception.

FINIS.

This book is DUE on the last
date stamped below.

REMINGTON RAND INC. 20 213

UNIVERSITY u? viii.ii v*JX1A

LOS ANQET.ES

CT